In Stitches
by Zana Zira
Summary: After a hunt with a chupacabra goes slightly wrong, Dean's more than a little beat-up and in need of some down-time. But, Dean being Dean, he won't rest until he has no other choice. And when the fates decide to add a raging case of bronchitis on top of everything? Well, even Dean might be out of his league this time. Sick/hurt!Dean, Caring/annoyed!Sam. Written for an LJ prompt.


**Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. Sadly, I do not own any of these guys.**

**A/N: This one-shot was written for two different prompts from two LJ users. The prompts were as follows:**

**"Dean has new stitches from a beastie that clawed him in the stomach. But Winchester luck being the way it is, he also has bronchitis. Ouch."**

**"Dean gets an injury that isn't life-threatening. Sam feels like hovering but Dean is all "Yeah, yeah I've had worse, don't worry". But then, "Ow fuck, it hurts!" and Sam can't stay back when his brother is whimpering (yeah Dean, it's nothing. Right!)"**

* * *

"Sam, I'm fine already! Get off me for God's sake!"

Sam just rolled his eyes and tuned out Dean's griping, concentrating instead on scrutinizing the last of fifteen stitches he had just sewn into his older brother's abdomen. He bit his lip when he saw how red and angry the wounds looked, applying a little more antiseptic ointment and a gauze pad while pretending to ignore the sharp gasp the extra pressure caused.

"You sure you're okay, Dean?" he asked when his brother flinched and bit back a grunt of pain. "I can try and grab us some pain meds from the hospital if you think you need 'em." They hadn't been on a medical supply run in a long time, and thanks to a lot of recent close calls with monsters, there weren't any good pain pills left.

"Nah, I'm good. Just gimme some Tylenol and I'll be fine," Dean said with an overconfident smirk, tracing the neat trails of stitches that ran across his belly and ribs. It was pretty obvious he was lying, judging by the pained lines that hadn't yet left his eyes, but there wasn't much Sam could do. If Dean was going to lie to him and say he was fine, he was going to let him deal with the consequences.

The three deep slashes were an unfortunate casualty of their latest hunt, a run-in with a chupacabra that had wandered into a young rancher's fields and started bleeding his ewes, most of whom were pregnant with spring lambs, completely dry. The little bitch had been tough to kill and mean as hell, likely because food was scarce in the winter and she probably had some young ones of her own to feed. Regardless, Dean and Sam had taken her down, saving the majority of the flock of expensive Rambouillet Merino sheep and earning the rancher's gratitude (and some tasty lamb chops).

But Dean, being the self-sacrificing fool he was, had also managed to get himself hurt in the process, jumping in front of Sam when the chupacabra turned on him and taking a vicious swipe across the belly for his efforts. There hadn't been any real need; the younger Winchester had had his gun at the ready, tripping backwards on purpose to make himself look vulnerable and waiting for the creature to lunge at him so he could blow its brains out of its hideous skull. Apparently his big brother had forgotten that, though, and paid for his heroics with his blood. Typical.

"This friggin' sucks," Dean muttered when Sam finally deemed his bandaging satisfactory and backed off to start putting their medical supplies away. He laid a hand gingerly across the gashes and sighed, coughing harshly into his other fist and then wincing when it pulled on his newly stitched skin. "Why the hell can't we just get out of here already?" he continued when Sam gave no indication of having heard him, fiddling with the ratty comforter and coughing again. "The hunt's done with. We need to start looking for other jobs!"

Sam snorted and did his best not to throw the icepack in his hand at Dean's head. Injured or not, Dean hated being idle; the younger Winchester knew that fact well, and had for most of his life. He had a sort of obsession with being constantly on the move, worried that the more time he spent laid up, the more time monsters would have to take down unsuspecting civilians on his watch. As a result, he usually just clenched his teeth and kept forging ahead, ignoring whatever injuries he might be dealing with at the time and swallowing down his hisses of pain with a few shots of whiskey.

That usually only made it worse in the end though; case in point, the hacking cough he had managed to come down with right before the hunt began. It had started off as a mild chest cold, nothing a day or two's rest and some Nyquil couldn't fix. But, because Dean refused to lay down and recover for even a moment unless he was forced to, it had morphed from a little cold into a full-blown case of bronchitis, complete with wheezing every other breath and enough hacked-up phlegm to put Pestilence to shame.

That was one of the many problems with their occupation. There wasn't any time for sick days, especially when one was as determined not to let innocent people get hurt as Dean was. But even the mightiest hunter couldn't fight off germs forever, and coupled with his recent injury, Dean was just too exhausted now to push through without some serious bed rest. Even so, laid out or not, he was still doing his best to be… Well… "A pain in Sam's ass" didn't even begin to cover it.

"Here," Sam said tiredly, handing Dean a mug of chamomile tea he had made earlier and set out to cool while he stitched his brother up. "It'll help your throat."

"I am _not_ drinking that girly shit, Sam," Dean growled, sounding like he'd spent the day gargling with rusty nails and broken glass. "It tastes like ass."

Sam smirked and raised an eyebrow. "And you know what that tastes like, how?"

Dean snorted and coughed again, a whistling wheeze following this time. "Wouldn't you love to know."

Shaking his head, Sam put the tea down – he had figured Dean wouldn't drink it willingly, but it was worth a shot – and reached for the bottle of cough syrup instead, pouring the correct dose of the inky purple liquid into the provided cup and passing it to his brother. Dean tossed it back like a shot, grimacing and curling his lip when he realized what flavor it was, and glared at his little brother.

"Seriously? You had to get the grape kind? That's like the worst of the worst!"

Sam clenched his teeth, trying to keep his hand from reaching out and smacking his brother senseless. "They only had grape and cherry, and you said you hated cherry."

"Yeah, but not as much as I hate grape!"

"Okay, fine. No grape next time. Got it. Anything else you forgot to tell me you can't stand?"

"Orange Gatorade."

Sam growled and clenched his fists, and Dean sighed.

"You got all orange, didn't you?"

"Yeah, and you're going to drink it. You've gotta take the Tylenol and some antibiotics for those cuts, and it's either orange Gatorade or the yellow-brown water coming out of the tap in the bathroom. You pick."

"Gatorade it is."

"I thought so."

Once he'd gotten his brother dosed with all the medications he needed for the time being, Sam ducked into the bathroom and took a quick shower before settling down in the unoccupied bed across the room. He hoped the codeine in the cough syrup would kick in soon and knock his brother out; there was only so much nagging he could take in one day, especially when he was already exhausted from taking down a chupacabra. The room was almost silent, save for the occasional grunt or wet cough from Dean, and before five minutes had passed he was already asleep, dreaming of someplace warm and far away from fields of sheep.

* * *

The wonderful dream Sam had been having about a beach vacation in Hawaii was abruptly shattered by the sound of the bathroom door slamming on the other side of the room. He sat up, still squinting blearily at the bright line underneath the door, and then the sound of hoarse coughing started to drift out to him. It started softly at first, a couple of huffs of air that could almost have been a laugh, and then Dean was hacking like a career smoker, so loudly it immediately had Sam out of bed and on his way to the door. Apparently the cough syrup had worn off.

When he reached the threshold, a near-whimper of what could only be pain was all the confirmation he needed that Dean was in some kind of distress. The door was unlocked when he tried it, and when he stepped inside he found his brother hunched over the sink, gripping the edge of the porcelain basin with one hand and his bandage-covered belly with the other. He turned around like he wanted to say something to Sam, then apparently changed his mind and returned to coughing up his lungs over the drain.

Sam came to his side, silently laying a hand on his back and becoming more and more concerned the longer the fit continued. Dean hadn't been this bad earlier, had he? "Dean? You okay?" His only answer was another series of ragged coughs, each accompanied by shrill wheezing that was really starting to scare him.

"Oww, f –" Dean rasped, gagging on something at the back of his throat until his face began to turn red. Cursing, Sam thumped his back until he finally retched and spat it into the sink.

"Fuckin' s-shit, this sucks!" Dean muttered. He held his breath and tried hard to stifle the coughs, clutching at the wounds on his stomach with both hands now and wheezing with the effort, but that only lasted a few seconds before they came back with a vengeance and then his legs gave out underneath him, dropping him to the tile on his knees. He curled up over his arms, one hand held against his mouth as if that would help anything, and Sam winced at the tears he could see in his brother's eyes.

Sure, he'd been frustrated with Dean earlier, thanks to his unnecessary bravado and the way he made Sam's job way more difficult than it should have been, but never in his life would Sam have wished for his brother to be in the kind of pain he must be experiencing now.

"Okay, easy, easy," Sam whispered, rubbing a hand up and down Dean's overheated back when he tried to take a large breath and only made the hacking worse. After a few seconds, though, it was apparent that all Dean was doing was coughing, not taking any breaths at all in between because he simply wasn't able to. He bent further forward and clutched blindly at a handful of Sam's shirt, clenching his teeth and eyes shut in pain, and Sam slipped a hand under his chest to force him upward and give his lungs a little more room to expand. "Come on, Dean. You gotta breathe, okay? I can't do it for you."

It took another agonizingly slow minute, but finally, finally the coughs tapered off and then stopped, leaving Dean panting and exhausted as he slumped back against Sam and tried to catch his breath. Sam let him, waiting until he seemed to have relaxed again before helping him stand and walk back to his bed. Then he flipped on the light, lifting the edge of the bandage so he could examine Dean's wounds.

"What're you doin'?" Dean asked quietly, too tired to actually give Sam a hard time. And even if he had, Sam wouldn't have reacted; there was no way he could be mad at Dean right now, after what he just witnessed.

"I'm checking your stitches to make sure you didn't bust one. And it looks like… Yeah, you did. There are two splits in the biggest gash. Dammit." He hurriedly fetched the med-kit again, being as quick and painless as he could when he rubbed alcohol over the wound and put in two brand-new stitches. Dean didn't protest this time, and the only indication he gave of even being aware of what Sam was doing was a slight clenching of his fists in the sheets whenever the needle pierced his skin.

Once that was done, Sam re-bandaged him and helped him sit up, fetching some more Tylenol and cough syrup and then filling a small glass with some warmed-up holy water – because the tap water in this room was a biohazard – and salt. Dean looked at him like he was crazy when Sam handed it to him.

"What the hell, Sam? My lungs aren't possessed."

Sam just chuckled and shook his head. "It's for your throat, Dean. Salt water helps to stop you from feeling like you need to cough so much. Just gargle with it."

Dean shrugged and did as he was told, still giving Sam a look that said he thought it was B.S., and then handed the cup back for Sam to rinse out. Right as he was starting to drift off, he heard Sam rustling something around on the other bed, and then a pillow was placed in his arms before he was gently rolled onto his side. He only had the energy for a questioning whine, but Sam seemed to understand all the same.

"Trust me, hugging a pillow helps when you've got stitches and a cough. It takes the pressure off a little so you don't open them up again."

"Wher'd you l'rn that?" Dean mumbled, pulling the pillow closer to his belly and curling into the cool fabric with a sleepy sigh.

"A friend of Jess's had a caesarian the first year I was dating her, and according to what Jess told me she caught a cold right after and her doctors recommended the pillow thing."

Dean grunted, and Sam figured he was trying to think of some comment about not needing pregnant chick remedies, but instead he just snuggled deeper under the covers and muttered "Thanks, Sammy…" before falling completely asleep.

And much to Sam's relief, he stayed that way for the rest of the night.


End file.
